Audio Essay Draft – Kunal Kang
In my audio essay, I tried to get the point across that everyone has terrible moments. Throughout my essay, I used examples to show that people’s worst moments are often specific instances from their lives rather than days where everything seemed to go wrong. This is probably because on one of those days where everything seems to go wrong, people fail to put their whole lives in perspective. So, when I interviewed people, many were able to reflect on their past experiences and truly say what moments were the worst for them. I tried to make my audio essay funny and heartfelt by using examples that were embrassing and ones that were sorrowful. In doing this, I also used two different songs with different tones that separated the more lighthearted interviews from the sad ones.
The pieces of Ira Glass’ advice that I tried to follow were “having a moment of reflection” (Part 1, 3:20) and “abandoning crap” (Part 2, 1:51). I tried to incorporate moments of reflection at the beginning and end of my project when I introduced my project and when I noted that all the interviews consisted of specific moments of emotion. I tried to “abandon the crap” in my project by changing my proposal slightly. I intended to also ask people what could have made their day better but I realized eventually this would not help because many people could not answer that question and those that did simply wished that their unfortunate moments hadn’t happened. I also scrapped some of the interviews that were not as engaging or came out terribly either because of sound quality or the person’s voice. These pieces of advice were important because without my moment of reflection, I feel the point of my audio essay would have been lost and without abandoning the crap I received, my essay would have been more cluttered.
The problems I had while drafting my essay were mostly technical. I had some issues with the quality of some of my recordings and how to change things in GarageBand like slowing down tracks or lowering the volume but I managed to figure out what to do after searching online for a while.
6 responses so far
The linked audio essay cuts off at 1.42, right in the middle of the girl telling the story about losing her phone on the subway. Try to upload again, or use a different method? You can upload to sound cloud and then link to the blog.
The sound quality is pretty good. And I love the choice of Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head as you background song. At some points it’s a little too loud and competes with the speakers too much.
At this point, it’s hard to tell if you’re building a narrative, or where you take it, and I don’t know how you wrap up, so I’ll end my comments there until I can hear the rest.
Professor Smith I uploaded my draft using Soundcloud hopefully this one works, please let me know if it doesn’t.
I like the question and I like the way you sort your responses with the simple ones first followed by the more serious ones. The way you sorted them allows the listener to come to a realization that first world problems aren’t that bad since there are many more serious issues that can happen. I think that at some points the background music is too loud and I think that there are some awkward pauses between each interview. I was expecting a rhythm and I didn’t find that flow from interview to interview. I think the choices of songs are great though and carry your story along. The message is also a little confusing for me, I don’t know what the main point is, is it just that bad things happen and we should focus on truly bad things and not first world problems?
Hi Kunal,
Thanks for uploading to Soundcloud. It’s working for me now!
You might re-record the opener; you’ve got some “trips” in there that you might try to avoid, and I like the little bit of sarcasm in “I’m just a cheerful kind of guy like that,” but since you’re playing with tone, you might try it a few ways to find the way that highlights tone and sets up the best tone for this piece. (Once you decide what you want that tone to be.)
I love how you put in breaks, and music changes, to match the music to the respondents’ own tone. The second section turning darker and more serious comes after a short break, allowing for reflection and indicating an impending turn, which is, of course, matched by the music change. This is a good instinct on structure. And overall, the framing segments by you along with two parts or chapters seem about right. Good overall approach to structure.
However…The music is so cheerful (Raindrops) to dreary that it borders on seeming satiric. Maybe the second music choice is a little OTT? Also, I’m not convinced by the choice to continue that music under your closing monologue, (which also strikes a very serious, somber tone, in contrast to your opening, more playful tone) and leaving it play for a while at the end. These choices with tone so heavily weigh the piece toward the second half, the more serious responses about worst days, that it’s confusing. Why did you include the first Raindrops part and the playful opening monologue of yours? How am I supposed to consider those earlier responses? Have they just dropped away? How do I reconcile the lighter responses with the darker ones? Your listeners need more guidance from you in reconciling the two “halves” of the piece. I mean, are you suggesting we just should’t worry about little problems like farting or getting rained on? By the way, some of those earlier problems aren’t so little. Her sister gets hit by a car? She gets into a car accident? A boy poops in his pants–that would be pretty humiliating for a little kid, frankly; something he’d never forget (clearly) and never live down. We all know how mean kids can be. This is to say: even that first Raindrops section has some serious disjunctions, so it’s hard to figure out how to feel about it, and it’s hard to get your point. Do you know what I mean? I wouldn’t want to simply dismiss that whole first set of responses as trivial, but your overall piece now seems to suggest they are.
I think you need to complicate and work out your message here, for best effect!
nice!
I like your fifty people one question approach, its fun to hear lots of different voices on the radio.
Your lucky that so many people answered! Was it scripted?
Maybe you should put the answers closer together instead of having so much reflective music between them, because by most of those answers there is not really much to reflect about, and it can feel a bit dragged out. I think that, and different music at theend, will really enhance your project.
Great music! I’m really impressed that you got such different and personal answers from strangers. I also like how you give musical interludes because the lyrics themselves add so much meaning to your project. I don’t really understand the point that you drew out from the responses, though. Maybe you can say something like “time heals all wounds” because though these events were really terrible for these people in the moment, they’re now able to discuss it with a total stranger. Or maybe you could end off with the point that people didn’t speak about their first world problems which shows that we are still able to differentiate between “real” problems and trivial ones. Just some ideas for you to explore or ignore.